Psi Chi Honors New Distinguished Members
7/22/2005
Dr. Elizabeth Loftus and Dr. Robert Sternberg were recently honored as Psi Chi's latest addition to its prestigious roll of Distinguished Members.
Drs. Loftus and Sternberg received special recognition at the recent Psi Chi Invited Address held in conjunction with the Western Psychological Association Convention in Portland, Oregon, April 14, 2005. The presentation took place at the beginning of Dr. Sternberg's Invited Address, "Culture and Intelligence." A brief reception was held following the talk for members, students, and faculty to meet the two newest Distinguished Members. Psi Chi welcomes Dr. Loftus and Dr. Sternberg as Distinguished Members.
BIOGRAPHIES OF DRS. LOFTUS AND STERNBERG:
Dr. Elizabeth Loftus is a distinguished professor at the University of California, Irvine. She holds positions in the Departments of Psychology & Social Behavior, and Criminology, Law & Society. She also has appointments in the Department of Cognitive Sciences and is a Fellow of the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory. Formerly, she was a professor of psychology and adjunct professor of law at the University of Washington, Seattle, where she taught for 29 years. She received her PhD in psychology from Stanford University. Since then, she has published 20 books and over 350 scientific articles. Her fourth book, Eyewitness Testimony, won a National Media Award (Distinguished Contribution) from the American Psychological Foundation (APF). One of her most widely read books, The Myth of Repressed Memory (coauthored with Katherine Ketcham) was published by St. Martin's Press and has been translated into Dutch, Taiwanese, French, German, Japanese, and other foreign languages.
Dr. Loftus has been an expert witness or consultant in hundreds of cases, including the McMartin Preschool Molestation case, the Hillside Strangler case, the Abscam cases, the trial of Oliver North, the trial of the officers accused in the Rodney King beating, the Menendez brothers case, the Michael Jackson case, the Bosnian War trials in Hague, the Oklahoma Bombing case, and the trial of the Marines accused of culpable negligence when they severed the cables of a ski-lift while flying in the Italian Alps. Dr. Loftus also has worked on numerous cases involving allegations of "repressed memories", such as those involving George Franklin of San Mateo, California, Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago, and Gary Ramona of Napa, California. Dr. Loftus's research of the last 20 years has focused on human memory, eyewitness testimony, and also on courtroom procedure. Her work has been funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Science Foundation. In 1983, she was invited to present this work to the Royal Society of London. She has received five honorary doctorates for her research, the first in 1982 from Miami University (Ohio), the second in 1990 from Leiden University in the Netherlands, the third in 1994 from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York (an honorary doctorate of law), and the fourth from the University of Portsmouth in England. Her fifth honorary doctorate was awarded in May 2005 from the University of Haifa in Israel.
She served as president (1984) of the Western Psychological Association, as president (1985) of the American Psychology-Law Society (Div 41 of American Psychological Association, APA), and as president (1988) of Division 3 (Experimental) of the APA. Finally, she was president of the American Psychological Society (APS, l998-l999).
In addition to the honorary degrees, Dr. Loftus has received numerous awards and honors for her research. In 1995, she received an award from the American Academy of Forensic Psychology--the Distinguished Contributions to Forensic Psychology Award. In l996, she received the American Association of Applied and Preventive Psychology (AAAPP) Award for Distinguished Contribution to Basic and Applied Scientific Psychology. In 1997, she received the APS James McKeen Cattell Fellow award ("for a career of significant intellectual contributions to the science of psychology in the area of applied psychological research").
Dr. Loftus continued to earn more prestigious awards after the turn of the century. She received the William James Fellow Award from the APS in 2001 (for "ingeniously and rigorously designed research studies...that yielded clear objective evidence on difficult and controversial questions."). In 2002, the National Academy of Sciences bestowed upon her the inaugural Henry & Bryna David Lectureship (an award for "application of the best social and behavioral sciences research to public policy issues"). The article that she wrote in conjunction with this award was subsequently selected for inclusion in The Best American Science and Nature Writing. In 2003, the same year that she received the APA Distinguished Scientific Award for Applications of Psychology, she was also elected to membership of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences. In 2004, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
Perhaps one of the most unusual signs of recognition of the impact of Dr. Loftus's research came in a study published by the Review of General Psychology. The study identified the 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century, and not surprisingly Freud, Skinner, and Piaget are at the top of that list. Dr. Loftus was #58, and the top ranked woman on the list.
Dr. Robert J. Sternberg is IBM Professor of Psychology and Education in the Department of Psychology, professor of management in the School of Management, and director of the Center for the Psychology of Abilities, Competencies, and Expertise at Yale. This Center is dedicated to the advancement of theory, research, practice, and policy advancing the notion of intelligence as developing expertise--as a construct that is modifiable and capable, to some extent, of development throughout the life span. The Center seeks to have an impact on science, on education, and on society. Dr. Sternberg was also the president (2003) of the APA. He was on the Board of Directors of the APA (2002-04) and of the Board of Trustees of the APA Insurance Trust (2004). He is currently on the Board of Trustees of the APF (2005-2009). Dr. Sternberg has also been president of the divisions of General Psychology (1), Educational Psychology (15), Psychology and the Arts (20), and Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology (24) of the APA. Dr. Sternberg has been acting chair and director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Psychology.
Dr. Sternberg received the PhD from Stanford University in 1975 and the BA summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, with honors with exceptional distinction in psychology, from Yale University in 1972. He also holds honorary doctorates from the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain; the University of Leuven, Belgium; the University of Cyprus; the University of Paris V, France; and Constantine the Philosopher University, Slovakia.
Dr. Sternberg is the author of over 1000 journal articles, book chapters, and books, and has received over $18 million in government and other grants and contracts for his research. The central focus of his research is on intelligence, creativity, and wisdom, and he also has studied love and close relationships as well as hate. This research has been conducted in five different continents.
Dr. Sternberg is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the APA (in 15 divisions), APS, the Connecticut Psychological Association, the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters, the International Association for Empirical Aesthetics, the Laureate Chapter of Kappa Delta Pi, and the Society of Experimental Psychologists. He has won many awards from APA, American Educational Research Association (AERA), APS, and other organizations. These awards include the Arthur W. Staats Award from the APF and the Society for General Psychology; the E. L. Thorndike Award for Career Achievement in Educational Psychology from the Society for Educational Psychology of the APA; the Arnheim and Farnsworth Awards from the Society for the Psychology of Creativity, Aesthetics, and the Arts of the APA; the Boyd R. McCandless Award of the Society for Developmental Psychology of the APA; the Distinguished Award for an Early Career Contribution to Psychology from APA; the Positive Psychology Network Distinguished Scientist and Scholar Award; the Palmer O. Johnson, Research Review, Outstanding Book, and Sylvia Scribner Awards from the AERA; the James McKeen Cattell Award from APS; the Distinguished Lifetime Contribution to Psychology Award from the Connecticut Psychological Association; the Anton Jurovsky Award of the Slovak Psychological Society; the International Award of the Association of Portuguese Psychologists; the Cattell Award of the Society for Multivariate Experimental Psychology; the Award for Excellence of the Mensa Education and Research Foundation; the Distinction of Honor SEK, from the Institucion SEK (Madrid); the Sidney Siegel Memorial Award of Stanford University; and the Wohlenberg Prize of Yale University. He has held a Fulbright Senior Specialist Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, and Yale University Senior and Junior Faculty Fellowships as well as a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship. He also has held the Honored Visitor Fellowship of the Taiwan National Science Council and the Sir Edward Youde Memorial Visiting Professorship of the City University of Hong Kong.
Dr. Sternberg has been listed in the APA Monitor on Psychology as one of the top 100 psychologists of the 20th century, and is listed by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) as one of its most highly cited authors in psychology and psychiatry. He also was listed in the Esquire Register of outstanding men and women under 40 and was listed as one of 100 top young scientists by Science Digest. He is currently listed in Who's Who in America, Who's Who in the World, Who's Who in the East, Who's Who in Medicine and Health-care, and Who's Who in Science and Engineering. He has served as editor of the Psychological Bulletin and is editor of The APA Review of Books: Contemporary Psychology.
Dr. Sternberg is most well known for his theory of successful intelligence, investment theory of creativity (developed with Todd Lubart), theory of thinking styles as mental self-government, balance theory of wisdom, WICS theory of leadership, and for his duplex theories of love and hate.